GOP rebels could shake up Senate

Tuesday's nomination of Mike Lee for the Senate by Utah Republicans served up yet another reminder about what this tumultuous and unpredictable election year might mean for next year’s Congress: The decorous and staid U.S. Senate could get a lot rowdier in 2011.

The transition from septuagenarian Bennett to Lee, who is younger than anyone else currently in the chamber, may be the most vivid illustration of how the next Senate could veer further from its clubby and collegial tradition, but it’s hardly the only example.

Republicans Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada made a name for themselves by bucking the established order.

Paul founded a rebel organization of ophthalmologists before taking on the hand-picked candidate of Senate Republican Leader and Kentucky GOP godfather Mitch McConnell. Angle, who was known for her habit of being the lone member of the legislature to vote against a variety of measures, launched an unsuccessful primary challenge against one of the most powerful members of the Nevada state Senate in her last race.

Along with Lee in Utah and a handful of other conservative insurgents still locked in primaries, these hopefuls believe that that village of Washington can only be saved by destroying it– or at least returned to what they see as first principles.

Fueled by tea party activists, the rebel Republicans are intent on doing a lot more than carving their names in the desks and sampling the dining room’s famous bean soup if they get to the Senate.

They owe little to the establishment—party leaders largely opposed their candidacies—and much to the fear-for-my-country movement from which they emerge. Many of them haven’t followed the timeworn paths to elected office.

Perhaps most important, they aren’t expecting to come to the capital to go along so they can get along. They are non-conformists who tend to chafe at authority,

Plum committee assignments and party leadership posts are not the lure for these candidates. Rather, they view their campaigns as rescue missions in which the overriding objective is to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.